A personal website by Khürt Williams, with inchoate ramblings on technology, photography, beer, and geekery.
jansenphoto (Dutch goes the Photo!)I’m neither a morning person nor a true night owl, although there is something about the quiet of the morning before everything is stirring, that is very attractive to me; it allows for that meditative time, when all that surrounds us can be breathed in.
I have been this way for as long as I can remember. I am
Yesterday after lunch, I found myself standing in the parking lot soaking in the sunshine, while staring at the water feature, and listening to the birds call to each other from the trees. It was a moment of zen and at that moment I regretted that I could not have more time to enjoy it.
There’s something different about you. Probably something that kids at school saw right away and teased you about. Likely something (or a collection of things) that you’ve spent considerable effort to hide from the world. They’re the weird-shaped edges you keep trying to iron out, but they’re part of you and are there for good, so they keep springing back. They’re the things that make you feel a bit like a freak. By definition, they’re also what makes you extraordinary. Exceptional.
NYC Subways Series: The Art Underground Old and New
Old Subway: Sunday, February 3, 2019, 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
New Subway: Sunday, February 10, 2019, 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Instructor: Alan Kesselhaut
"In New York City, underground art is a literal phenomenon." Huffington Post. We will explore the NYC Subway, finding astonishing museum-quality artworks in the Subway's labyrinth of corridors while we capture the energy and soul of the people who inhabit the underground street.
In the Old Subway, we'll shoot a Roy Lichtenstein mural, passageways lined with colorful glass mosaics and a profusion of work in unexpected materials, all without leaving the subway!
In the New Subway, We'll shoot Chuck Close's and Vik Muniz' extraordinary contemporary mosaics and the spectacular Oculus at the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. The class meets at Penn Station. Your registration includes one subway entrance fare per class.
This one requires two weekends! I’ve done field trips in New York City with instructor Alan Kesselhaut and I was exhausted but I learned a lot and got some great images for my catalogue.
Learning photography is not a difficult task.
I am still learning and this is after over forty years of taking pictures. The learning process hopefully never ends.
How do you learn? Before you plan a photo trip to Iceland or Patagonia or any other exotic place you need to become familiar with how light falls upon your subject, how to recognize interesting weather, to compose and to process your images.
But workshops and field trips are useless unless one practices every day. Several times over the last twenty years I have done photo-a-day projects, photo-a-week projects and last year, photo-a-month. Practices make perfect and although I still have a lot to learn, I know my photography has improved with time. It was only after I felt that my basic skills had improved that I started attending day-long workshops.
I think it is money well spent and I am still learning to compose and play with light. This year I intend to attend fields trips in and around Philadelphia and New York City.
I asked a friend yesterday about a book I’d recommended to him (My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok) and I found myself writing the words, “did you like it?” before self-consciously backing out of that with something along the lines of “not that liking it is remotely the point.” Because it’s not. Whether we “like” art is no real measure of it’s importance, relevance, humanity, or even its beauty. But it is so easy to evaluate, or respond to art merely in terms of whether or not we like it. Our consumption of social media has not helped with this: so overwhelmed by content of all kinds we give our full attention to less and less of it, our responses getting less considered and less nuanced with every Like.
We are conditioning ourselves to Like. And in so-doing we are training ourselves away from deeper thought or engagement.
